Ian Mullins has been fighting for the right to bargain collectively since he took a teaching job at UVA. It’s not a tenured post, so he makes a lot less than other sociologists in his department. He says, many junior faculty members can’t afford to live in Charlottesville.
“They could commute up to an hour each way each day they go to work," he says. "UVA employees have had to take on second jobs, like overnight at Kroger, which not only is exhausting but it also takes them away from their family, their neighborhood and their community.”
And they have no say on important work-related issues – like class size.
“The size of my classes really matters in terms of the attention I can give to students," Mullins explains. "Class enrollments have been going up, and the administration is pushing us to put more and more students inside the classroom.”
Andy Knightley works in facilities management.
“There’s a cap of $18 an hour for recycling staff. The living wage in Charlottesville is about $23.50 an hour for a single person with no children. Most of my department has other jobs that are also on grounds. The university makes it very convenient to offer you a job in a dining hall. You can go from your full-time job to your part-time job.”
If fellow employees were eligible for collective bargaining, Knightly says, the university could have recovered more quickly from the latest weather emergency.
“We were under-equipped for this storm.I heard one person describe it as scraping up glaciers.We could have told our managers exactly what it was that we needed, but we were left out of that.”
Members of Virginia’s House of Delegates cut university employees from a collective bargaining bill, and state senators removed home healthcare workers.Now, Mullins, Knightley and other campus organizers are asking the public to weigh-in – to demand those groups be included when the House and Senate meet to iron-out differences between their bills.A final vote on the issue must come before the session ends on March 14th.
Rallies are planned Saturday on the William and Mary Campus, Andrews Hall – 10 a.m. room 101
At the Blacksburg Community Center from 12:30-2:00
In Fairfax, from 2-3:30 at the Ornery Beer Company
And on the ODU campus in Constant Hall, room 2100 at 3 p.m.
